The Bonnart Lecture 2026 with Professor David Scott of Columbia University
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Growing echoes in his head: through the prism of Stuart Hall's life
In the interlocking worlds of political activism, academia and the arts, Stuart Hall engaged with some of the central issues of his times and ours: race and inequality, and their imprint on culture and politics. In later life, Hall considered the senses in which his mature thinking owed something to the Jamaica of his birth and early life.
In this lecture, David Scott reflects on one dimension of the way in which Jamaica never stopped “growing echoes” in Hall’s head and suggests that Hall’s formative Jamaican experience shaped the kinds of understandings he later brought to the now-familiar arena of Cultural Studies. Hall did not learn culture in the intellectual and political milieu of the New Left in post-1956 Britain, as is often presumed. He brought an evolving understanding of culture from the colonial Jamaica he left in 1951. If the biographical challenge is to track the connections between a life and its work, this lecture suggests how, in a rather pronounced way, the story of the arc of Stuart Hall’s life is a generative or constituting frame in which to properly appreciate the contours and motivations of his work.
David Scott teaches at Columbia University, New York, where he is the Ruth and William Lubic Professor in the Department of Anthropology. He is the author of Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (Duke University Press, 2017) and is currently working on a biography of Stuart Hall. Scott is the founder and editor of the journal Small Axe and director of the Small Axe Project. His recent publications include: Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History (Columbia University Press, 2024); The Paradox of Freedom: A Biographical Dialogue (Polity Press, 2023) (with Orlando Patterson); Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (Duke University Press, 2017); Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (Duke University Press, 2014).
The lecture will be followed by a drink reception.
The Bonnart-Braunthal Trust funds postgraduate scholarships at Birkbeck that explore diversity, minorities, and social justice. The trust was founded by Frederick Bonnart, who came to England from Vienna in the 1930s as a child refugee. He founded his trust in 2002, with a vision that it would contribute to a tolerant and inclusive society.
Contact name: Naomi Smith
Speakers- David Scott, Columbia University
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